Mom
Hi, sweetie. Sloane called in a panic about the flowers, so your dad and Granddad and I all left to go help. Dad’s keys are on the tray on the kitchen counter, so come whenever you can.
That’s better than telling me to get an Uber, I guess.
Walking through the empty house, a wave of nostalgia crashes into a wall of shame. Should I be grateful that the family didn’t take down the pictures of Evan and me in uniform from so many games and tournaments? Or embarrassed? Whatever pride they had in me was conditional, and I didn’t meet the conditions.
I take a peek out of the kitchen window to our huge, snow-covered backyard. It resembled a training facility more than a yard once, with the batting cage and netting Granddad bragged about installing himself. He made sure everyone knew he built it, like he owned my sweat. The ghost of the place still haunts me.
I see flashes—Granddad barking at me until my throat burned from swallowing back protests. My dad watching from the porch, scarred and silent, like he knew exactly how it felt. A thousand times I was so tired, so drained, I wished Dad would say something. Stand up for me to Granddad. Tell me I was enough. Tell me“My favorite thing about baseball is watching you play.”
I drag my eyes from the backyard and find the key tray near the junk drawer next to the fridge. On the side of the fridge is a page of stamps, the number of a landscaper, a reminder for an appointment, and … I laugh darkly.
A paper with the dates of Evan’s upcoming speaking engagements. My parents have it on the board like it’s a game schedule.
Right. Evan is exempted—from blame, from failure, from disappointing them. Life took the game away from him, and that makes him noble. Granddad too—the war took him out. But Dad and me? We lost on our own errors. No exemption. No grace.
I grab Dad’s keys, and they scrape like claws on metal against the tray. The sound grates.
I march through the house to the garage and climb into Dad’s truck, the leather seat cold enough to burn.
Better not keep my family waiting any longer.
This tuxedo fits like a straitjacket, especially around my throat. After I parked, it took me three tries at retying the bow tie before I realized the knot wasn’t the problem—it’s my own gripping panic.
Mom spots me the second I walk through the floral archway at the front of one of Rochester’s oldest churches. The inside smells faintly of old hymnals and beeswax candles. Stained-glass saints catch the pale winter light. Wooden pews creak whenever anyone shifts their weight.
“Oh, good, you got my message,” she says.
“You sent a text, Mom,” I say.
I don’t know if she’s too distracted to register my tone or too used to it. It hurts, either way.
“Right. If you have an extra hand, you can help with the flowers?—”
“Even if I had ten extra hands, I couldn’t help with flowers.”
She laughs. Then her eyes stop moving around the room and land on me. She smiles. “I’m so glad you could make it, sweetie.”
For a moment, I feel her words sink in like sunlight after a freeze. But then, she adds, “Evan would have been devastated if you hadn’t.”
I nod slowly, numbly. “Anything for Evan.”
She smiles again, like this is exactly what she wanted to hear. And it should be. This is his wedding day! He’s not a rebellious teen with too much talent and not enough sense anymore. He’s a grown man who’s been to hell and back and turned his life around. Why am I not proud of him? Happy for him? Celebrating the love and support he gets?
How dare I be so jealous?
When I was a kid, I was allergic to mosquito bites. A single bite would swell up like a golf ball, and the itch would be so fierce I couldn’t sleep.
My parents stressed,“Never scratch the bites. They’ll only hurt worse.”
“But they’re so itchy!”I would cry.
“You have to ignore them,”they’d say.
I didn’t see how that was possible, but I obeyed, because I always obeyed. A single bite could keep me up for hours, and I would tell myself,ignore the pain, ignore the painuntil exhaustion claimed me.
Eventually, I got bit enough that my body adapted, and my reactions became typical—a bump and some itching, but after years of swelling and fire under my skin, the itch felt like nothing.
